The similarities are uncanny:
On the one hand, you have the members of Spinal Tap, the hard rock bank, standing on stage, cowls over their heads, smoke billowing around them, eerie lighting from underneath.
They are supposed to be druids. As a mysterious guitar riff plays, a reproduction of one of the Stonehenge pillars is lowered onto the stage.
The pillar was meant to be monumental — 11 feet high. Except, due to a typo in the blueprint, the pillar is only 11 inches high. It’s lowered onto the stage, and is below the knees of guitar player Nigel Tufnel.
And similarly, this morning:
You have me, cowl over my head, lit up eerily from underneath, laughing a villainous laugh, going into my Kindle publishing account and raising the price of my 10 Commandments ebook from $4.99 to $200 — as high as Amazon will let me.
“What a spectacle,” I exclaim in triumph. “The whole Internet will soon be talking about me and my $200 40-page Kindle ebook.”
And then, a few minutes later, I go on Amazon to see my 11-inch Stonehenge lowered onto the stage:
Digital List Price: $200.00
Kindle Price: $12.69
Save: $187.31 (94%)
It turns out that, even if you set a ridiculously high price for your Kindle ebook, Amazon won’t actually honor that. They will sell your book for what they like, not for what you like.
I guess there are many lessons to draw from this.
But for today, I just want to say this is a fitting example of the chasm between spectacle conceived and spectacle delivered.
Lots of business owners think their marketing stunts are groundbreaking, terrific, sure to go viral among prospects and non-prospects alike.
The reality is an increase in price from $4.99 to $12.69.
Oh well. It’s just an opportunity to learn something and try again, with some new sensation. Because what else is there?
I’ll leave you with the following story from the godfather of modern advertising, Claude Hopkins, after he first tried and failed to make it as a marketer in Chicago:
===
That night after dinner I paced the streets. I tried to analyze myself. I had made a great success in Grand Rapids; I was making a fizzle here. What were the reasons? What was there I did in the old field which I could apply to Swift & Company’s problems?
At midnight, on Indiana Avenue, I thought of an idea.
===
Hopkins realized that in Grand Rapids, he had created sensations. So his new idea was to create the largest cake in the world to advertise Cotosuet, a margarine sold by Swift & Company.
Result?
105,000 visitors to see the world’s largest cake… thousands of new Cotosuet buyers… and the start of a very long, very successful, and very influential advertising career for Claude Hopkins.
That’s a valuable Claude Hopkins lesson. But not as valuable, in my opinion, as the Claude Hopkins lesson I write about in Commandment VI of my 10 Commandments book.
You can find that, along with a generous discount that Amazon has decided to provide for you, on the following page: